Beauty
by frsnk
Summary: She fights against herself, then she has to fight against the world. But she is beautiful, and she will show them. A slightly poetic oneshot about Ino's journey as a young girl, facing the expectations of her peers and parents, as well as the stereotypes placed upon her. disclaimer: I do not own any characters in this story.


She's skinny.

Stay skinny.

Don't eat.

Stay beautiful.

Beauty - definition: a combination of qualities that pleases the aesthetic senses.

But she's not beautiful. She's not pleasing.

They call her pretty, they call her slender, they tell her that you should model.

But she's not. She's not pretty or skinny or a model.

She's too short, too fat, her skin is too blotchy, she has straw-like blonde hair and her eyes are an awful greyish blue colour.

Her mum always tells her she loved her eyes, said they reminded her of the day she met your dad. Her friends all told her that she has an amazing figure, and her cousin keeps saying that she's jealous of her flawless skin.

Don't they see it though? Don't they see the ugly thing standing in front of them? They say she's popular, one of the most popular in her school, but can't they see she's not good enough? Not good enough to sit with the stunning girls she calls friends, and not good enough to walk around with them.

No. She has to do better, be better. Be the beautiful they all want her to be, the beautiful that they expect of her, the one they keep telling her to become.

She's not skinny. But she will become skinny.

She will become beautiful.

Blond hair, blue eyes, pretty clothes, painted nails,

They think she's a ditz.

They think she's weak.

They pass her over and move along because 'no way can the dumb blonde over there be strong enough to be a shinobi'.

But she is. And she can. But they ignore her. They place her in a box, shut the lid and tie a nice big bow on the top – after all, a pretty girl should get a pretty bow shouldn't she?

Didn't she just get out of the constricting expectations shoved on her at school? She had thought that that was over. She did what they wanted and she became beautiful. And it took her forever to recover afterwards.

She had won that fight, but now the world wanted her to fight another. She doesn't think she's strong enough this time - after all she had come so close to losing last time.

And maybe yes, there were parts of her which were still fake, parts of her which she invented during that war, which she held onto long after you had won. Parts of her which had helped her achieve the goals they put before her.

But now, they existed as remnants of a past she wanted to forget, but also a past she wanted to paint across the walls of Konoha so everyone could see it - the strength she had when she won, and the scars she was left with afterwards.

So everyone would look up and smile as they were reminded that the world is not black or white. It is not this or that, or me or you, or friend or enemy. No; instead it's beautiful, it can be made beautiful. It can be monochrome with splashes of colour or colourful with dark patches. It can be this, that or this and that. It can be me, you or someone completely different who you've never heard of but respect the opinion of nonetheless. It can be just friends.

But right now? Right now she struggles onwards, pulling herself inch by inch closer to that single goal.

Beauty.

She will achieve it.

She will, and then she will help everyone else achieve it too. She will become beautiful because she recovered. She will become beautiful because she is going to be a shinobi. She will become beautiful because she will prove that a box does not have to constrict who she is, instead she will turn those walls into windows and the bow into a key, and she will_ let herself out_. She will shatter the ideas people have of her when they see her.

Because she is blond, with blue eyes and cute clothes,

But she is also strong enough to win a war waged against herself,

She is smart enough to be what no one ever thought she could be.

She is confident that when she does paint that beautiful and dark story onto the massive walls of the village, people will see, people will notice, and people will destroy the boxes they have been placed in since birth.

Because she is Konoha,

Because she is beautiful.

Because she is human.

Beauty - definition: a combination of qualities that pleases the aesthetic senses. Ino.


End file.
